Introduction

New York City aims to reduce the amount of waste disposed of by 90 percent by 2030 and send zero waste to landfills by that point, according to its new plan for the city.1

This project aims to determine how much waste New York City (NYC) residents recycle and whether recycling varies among different districts in NYC. If a difference does exist, we hope to uncover possible explanations for it. These differences may be explained by socioeconomic factors such as income and educational attainment. It’s possible that the amount of recycling in each district might also be affected by the sheer number of public recycling bins in each district or the average distance to the nearest recycling bin in each district.

Motivation

Considering that recycling levels differ among different districts in New York City, it would be very interesting to learn the reasons/explanations behind these differences. Understanding why recycling is successful in some areas and unsuccessful in others may inspire new initiatives to promote recycling in New York City. In addition to being great for the environment, it would also benefit NYC’s residents (recycling reduces pollution, conserves energy, reduces the need for new raw materials, and keeps trash out of landfills).

Possibly the gained knowledge could be applied to other cities in the US and/or around the world. This project would mostly affect UN SDGs 11 and 12 in a positive way.

Below is a video that summarizes our project idea:

  1. https://www.waste360.com/organics/new-york-city-aims-zero-waste-2030 ↩︎

Data sources

This section describes our data sources.

Data source 1

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Data source 2

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Data source N…

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NYC districts and their public recycling bins

The map below displays the 59 community districts in New York City as well as the registered public recyling bins in New York City. The map reveals that there is a high concentration of public recycling bins in lower Manhatten and Northern Brooklyn but a lower concentration in suburban areas.

To further investigate the availability of public recycling bins in the different community districts, we visualize the distance to the nearest recycling bin for all locations in New York City. Not surprisingly, we see that the distance to the nearest public recycling bin is in general much lower for people living in Manhattan and Northern Brooklyn than it is for people living in suburban areas, such as Queens or Staten Island. We also notice that there is an area in the middle of Brooklyn with almost no recycling bins.

Recycling over time

Next, we turn our focus to how the recycling behaviour of New Yorkers have changed over the past few years. In the map below the recycling rate, i.e. the amount of waste recycled as a fraction of the total waste stream, is shown for 17 months throughout 2018 and 2019. The recycling rates for both paper and for metal, glass, plastic & beverage cartons are visualized as well as the total recycling rate. The map reveals that the recycling rate is in general lower for paper than it is for metal, glass, plastic & beverage cartons. But we also see that all three recycling rate increases from the beginning of 2018 to the end of 2019 for most district in the city. Good job New Yorkers!

Here is link for the map if it does not load.

Recycling and socio-economic factors

Prediction of recycling rates.

Prediction of recycling variables.

Conclusion

Conclusion.

Explainer notebook

Explainer notebook.